Legacy and current Broadband Digital Loop Carrier (BDLC) Outside Plant (OSP) enclosures are designed primarily for termination and distribution of copper-based subscriber circuits. The cabinets are typically designed with minimal space for other equipment (passive or active) in the system. Fiber-based applications, i.e., PON (passive optical network), on the other hand, have limited available space in the enclosure. This makes it difficult to terminate and manage the fiber cabling, which must be extended from the channel bank to the OSP environment, and eventually to the customer. Historically, this termination and management have been performed in a rack-mounted fiber termination panel, which includes:
1) A set of bulkhead panels to which a fiber pigtail is connected towards the OSP and a fiber jumper is connected that faces towards the channel bank;
2) Slack storage members for storage of slack in the OSP cable, pigtail, and jumper; and
3) A mechanism for storage and organization of the fusion splice, which terminates the pigtail to the OSP cable.
However, there is often insufficient space for the panel, or it is viewed as a waste of valuable rack space.
It is possible to take into consideration that a common method of providing lightning surge protection for copper pairs is via the use of a five-pin protector module (gas tube or solid state), which is plugged into a mating protector block. A typical form factor of this block is commonly known as the “307-type” form factor. This is a 10×10 protector block that snaps into a mounting arrangement in the cabinet into which it is mounted. As technology transitions to fiber-based applications, the need for these copper protector blocks is eliminated, resulting in wasted cabinet space if it is not re-captured.